by Mike Lopresti, USA TODAY Sports

by Mike Lopresti, USA TODAY Sports

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - While he waited to hear if he had cancer, Roy Williams thought of his mother who died during surgery. He thought of his grandchildren just beginning to know him.

He thought of how he should have paused to savor those national titles more. He thought of 2009, when barely 36 hours after the championship game, he was standing in a parking lot in Ames, Iowa, waiting to see a recruit.

The college basketball season is now full-blown. The September fears have faded, and the 5-1 North Carolina Tar Heels came here to play No. 1 Indiana. And yet, on this Tuesday afternoon, like every day, Williams took a moment to remember how lucky he is, and blessed, and alive. To remind himself to enjoy the journey, because two months ago he didn't know long that journey might be.

``I'm hoping that I do change a little,'' Williams told USA TODAY Sports while sitting in a hotel lobby. ``A lot of people make New Year's resolutions that last till January 3, so I'm hoping mine will last a heck of a lot longer than that.

``I'm trying to do a better job at that, but yet you do crazy things. I gritted my teeth so hard during the Butler game (a Tar Heel loss in Maui), that I cracked a filling. I'm over there picking parts of my tooth out of my mouth and putting them in the trash can beside the bench.''

Still, Williams' cancer scare has had a happy ending. Surgery determined that tumors on both of his kidneys were benign, after doctors had warned Williams there was a 95 percent chance they were malignant.

In the days leading up to surgery, a frightened Williams remembered a parent with cancer who died on the operating table.

``What did that make me think of?" Williams asked. "I thought of my mother. The surgery scared the crap out of me.''

Then there was the wait to hear the results, when he could not shake one particular fear.

``I have a grandson that will be three years old on January 1, and I have another grandson that's' 14 months old. They wouldn't even remember me. They wouldn't even remember they had a grandfather.''

The phone call with good news from the doctor changed everything, and still there were trials amid the joy. Letters of encouragement poured in from strangers, many of whom had suffered through similar ordeals, some of them not so fortunate to hear such good news.

``There was a fear that, this is great, but am I supposed to be this blessed?'' Williams said. ``It does give you a feeling of guilt, and that's been hard for me to handle.''

Even before his surgery, the off-season had been trying, as an academic scandal involving sham classes pulled at North Carolina, starting with the football program and then basketball.

``It's North Carolina and that just kills me," he said. "It's not only where I went to school and my wife went to school, it's where we sent our children to school.''

In response, he said, there have been changes within the university, the athletic department and his own program.

``So many people lost their jobs, so many different positions have been added, so many different systems of checks and balances have been added," he said. "We've had to answer the question in every home, recruiting-wise. We have looked at all our stuff with magnifying glasses, page by page.

``We're very comfortable with what we've done academically. Every senior we've had has graduated. They don't give those degrees away, regardless of what some people are implying right now.''

And he said the level of other schools using the story in recruiting against North Carolina has been ``off the charts.''

But now comes the season, and the practices, and the games. Williams said he tries to look at it all from a altered perspective, forged by the indescribable feeling of getting a second chance at the age of 62.

He has wanted to be a coach since he was ninth grader, wanting only to emulate his high school coach.

``I'm hoping that I do enjoy the good times," he said. "I'm hoping that I look at the bad times and won't take things so badly. Even back 25 years ago, Coach (Dean) Smith told me his biggest worry about me as a head coach was how hard I took the losses as an assistant.''

Bad news, good news, the games go on for a man who has always loved being a coach, and now has a reason to cherish it even more.